Microsoft has shuttered one of its oldest and most popular instant messaging software products.

Microsoft started to phase out MSN Messenger globally in April 2013 and it will only available in mainland China until then. The reason is that Microsoft owns Skype now and there is really no need for messenger.

As an incentive to join Skype, Microsoft is offering a free $2 credit to users that make the switch.

In 2005, Microsoft rebranded MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger and it ended up with 330 million active users each month.

MSN Messenger was maintained in China through a partnership with Chinese media company TOM Group. However, that ended last year due to a row between TOM Group and Skype over the new users acquired by Skype.

Microsoft is operating Skype in China with a company called Guangming Founder. Skype has been modified to support Internet regulations.

Microsoft has decided to kill off one of those things it made which were ahead of its time. Redmond’s Steve Perlman came up with WebTV in the 1990s long before TVs were smart. The big idea was to marry the computer and television.

Now Microsoft is seeing the technology widely used but has decided to pull the product it bought for $425 million in 1997. Now called MSN TV, Microsoft has announced that it will cease operations in September of 2013.

At the time it was considered huge. Businessweek said in 1996 that "I think we may now have the product that could turn the World Wide Web into a mass-entertainment medium." The WebTV kit was made up of a box, keyboard, and remote. It browsed the web and checked email without requiring a lot of extra and expensive hardware.

Redmond made a bit of cash out of it. Mostly from a monthly subscription service it offered. It was killed off by AOL TV and proper smart TVs. The division was broken up, the product was renamed to MSN TV, and many of its members went to the Xbox team or to work on Mediaroom. Perlman eventually left, too, and later founded OnLive, a company with obvious ties to the WebTV idea.